this world we have all ultimately got to come to grips with ...

We all know that there is a world that transcends the Internet and I do not speak of spiritual dimensions that I am often prone too. But … that’s another subject, which I will get back to … whenever. But I speak of the “real world” (or at least the physical one we mostly can agree exists) of human beings … flesh and blood … hard floors and TV misinformation … commercials and cops … capitalists and revolutionaries … and just about anything in between. This … is the world we have all ultimately got to come to grips with. If my spiritual perceptions can not deal with this … they are (at the most fundamental level) … deficient … or possibly devoid of any greater spiritual value. Not to say that they are not true for what they are, but they fail at the most basic level. And that does me little good.

I am a musician … and as well have capabilities in recording engineering and a few other associated skills. I also have a varied self acquired knowledge of a number of other subjects generally spiritual, historical, computers, psychological and philosophical (becoming less as the list progresses). You might add that I am a political hodge-podge … some left … some libertarian … and oh so little support for national and International American policies. And I think the capitalist system as it has evolved is intrinsically corrupt and needs to be redefined apart from corporate control and influence. Of course I know that this last one is an absolute pipe-dream … but I do not deny myself the pleasure of an occasional pipe or other such rolled delight.

But yet I must adapt all of this …. “stuff” … to the task at hand … and survival is the task at hand. And I suppose it ultimately is for all of us. No matter the system or what we may believe … or want to believe.
I have been an Internet protagonist since I first became aware in 1996 and before that had operated Computer Bulletin Boards over the phone lines. I got my first computer in 1983 and everyone thought I was nuts. But … the decision and the knowledge gained paid off in very significant ways shortly thereafter. But I was not interested in committing to a life invested in computers … oh god no … But I loved what I could make them do … and it still boggles my mind … and I see no end to it. But computer communications… and our ability to connect … (locally and now internationally) … this was always my favorite.

I believed some things were possible years before they became mainstream. But music and spiritual interests were always at the forefront of everything. They still are. But these are ultimately very personal, and with spiritual things each must ultimately figure it out for themselves … though I do regard teachers and mentors as highly beneficial. And music … as personal expression … well … that’s a “no brainer” …. I think we can mostly all appreciate that. BUT … I am not interested in music as purely an avocation … I am interested in it as a career … a life style … an artistic expression that speaks beyond my own desire and speaks into and for a culture that I happen to inhabit. This is a dream that I had committed myself to several years back and as the realities of pursuing this dream became more consequential life patterns of many I had relation too were thrust into a state of unanticipated disruption and change. Too say the least … I was caught off guard … I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. I was no longer in control of life … life was just happening … and I was on a friggin’ roller coaster … with a god damn brick wall at the end of it … and no effin’ way to get off.

I don’t know how … or just what the situation was … but one of my contacts (who is a psychologist) began to explain to me how “as I proceed to follow my dream … I could expect my ego to ‘grow’”… Well … this was a little bit of a shocker … because I had always been taught the “evils” of this ego thing and the “gentle Jesus meek and mild” sort of crap … and was only relatively new considering the “knowing thyself” aspect as fundamental to understanding what true humility was/is. You know the “ego trip” syndrome that musicians often get hung up on. It’s all bull shit. Because I began to understand that if they had no such ego … they would not create any such artistic invention that the rest of us all gravitate to and admire as representations of what we feel and know. Now, this does not excuse a lot of the egotism that we all hear tales of, but the ego itself is not the problem. It is our inability to master it and know what it is and it’s limits and extents as we relate to other human beings.

If I am to succeed in what it is I believe I am … and musician/artist is what I speak of here … (there are other things but not contextually pertinent) … I will grow into what that is and my ego (persona reflecting this) will change and evolve accordingly … Maybe I’m just full of shit … But in the real world of flesh and blood and making love and the woman I desire … that seems to be the way it works.

I want a lot in this world … I am a very patient man … that demonstrates it regularly. But I am a man with intention … I have desires and varied goals … I will grow in these … I will not remain stagnate … I will become what it is I already know that I am … And my spiritual nature will have its way in this world we have all ultimately got to come to grips with.

Thus I have written …

I feel that I may be a bit of an anomaly. I don’t lie, at least not intentionally; although to protect ones I love I’m sure I would in certain extraordinary circumstances. What I speak and write is very personal to me. I mean the words I use to communicate “are not just words”, they are representations of me … who I am … what I feel … what I think. Abstractions of what is “real” to me in my being.

There are some who think I use too many words and think too much. I will not argue or belabor the point, by their perspective they are right. But I will not cease to think nor will I immediately refrain from using combinations of words that I determine best expresses what I understand and feel. Yet … I do recognize … that in particular situations “words” are superfluous. And to some sound empty or hollow, without substance. It is as though language has lost all meaning and value. I find this a very sad and regrettable state that we live in.

I was married for thirty two years. Not an unfaithful day during that time and was celibate the two years prior and since separation and divorce there had not been a sexual encounter. Now it is true that in the past two years there have been women who have interested me, but nothing came of them. Something in the chemistry was missing or could not sustain itself over time, and I don’t believe it was simply a matter of physical proximity, though I may have jumped into bed had the opportunity afforded itself. But in all, my “obsession” with what I have come to understand as “myself” and being true to what I know myself to be was primary. Very few ladies (or men for that matter) can comprehend the totality of this, or maybe better said accept me for what I am.

To me my words are me. Or, probably as close as most will ever get to knowing me. I take them seriously … for the most part … though I can joke and cut up with everyone else … that often takes some by surprise and they don’t know when it is a “joke” and I am kidding them.

Having lived a rather “sheltered” conventional conservative life through marriage and raising children, there are those who consider my perspectives and perceptions as rather naïve. A year ago one even stated that they felt the need to protect me in what might be considered the real world of street life experiences. Unfortunately this assumes a certain ignorance on my part of the realities of human nature. I admit a degree of lack of street experience … but the lack of experience does not preclude a lack of understanding or knowledge of such. Business relations are something I have had all my life, and human nature is no less intrinsic there, or more ideal, than it is in any other facet of life.

For the most part I have had a rather good life. Certainly not perfect and there were the usual ups and downs and occasional crises that were a part of it. And even though my affiliations and ideologies have evolved I am still intrinsically the same man who was faithful to the same woman for so many years (that is ended), and find no need to fly from flower to flower. I don’t expect this will ever change. The track record seems pretty good so far and I have no desire to alter it.

So … you see … my words are me … they are not “just words” … And the woman I love … is not just one of the women I relate to as friends … she IS “the woman I love”. And there is only room for one … I can not and do not desire more.
Thus I have written …

Cowboy Creations - a wondrous thing

The mind is a wondrous thing. Oh … I am not talking about the "brain", although that certainly must be considered and plays it's own part in the input and distribution of information and our perceptions, but the mind, the part of us that is quite separate from the physical aspects of matter, if not actually at least virtually transcending physicality's and time and space.

I'm not a psychologist, or a psychoanalyst, but I have read a great deal of Carl Jung and a number of others and it has greatly influenced my thinking.  I certainly am not a scientist or a physicist, although I have studied the theories (to a limited degree) of Bacon, Newton, Einstein and now the quantum physicists.  I'm not a theologian though I have studied Bible extensively and generally come up with unorthodox conclusions, and  in more recent years have studied the writings of the Gnostics, the mysteries, eastern philosophy and these associated religions.  Metaphysics fascinates me.  I am an artist - a musician - I use both left and right brain - they both serve an intrinsic purpose accomplishing what it is that my mind perceives and I wrestle in life to express. 

Many have commented, in many varied and sundry ways, that I am a philosopher.  Though I have a very difficult time conceiving myself as such I am highly honored that they would think so.  Because I am no one particular, I'm just a man struggling to make sense of it all.  In many respects I've had a good life.  I've loved and lost, I have married and raised a large family.  And I've lost that. And I have found that love does come again. 

There was a time I was very hard, probably for most of my life.  It is easy to rationalize, it is a hard world.  And hoping to prepare the ones I love for such a world I instilled into them hardness that I was feeling wrapped in a cloak of what I now understand to be superficial pseudo spiritual religiosity.  But this is what we were taught .  This is what our religion was giving us .  And it's not only my religion or that of a single world religion .  It is the religion of modern contemporary reality.  Not Christian or Muslim or Buddhist or any of the rest, but a mindset that takes the input of the brain - the five senses - and deduces  from it, "this is all there is - there ain't no more - make the most of it …baby".

I highly respect the knowledge that can be observed and recorded as the operations of physical dimension.  But I find these lacking of any true purpose meaning value to what it is to me to be human. 

I have found my purpose - my meaning - in the cries for understanding of others who allow them selves to come close to me.  I've found my value in the expressions of joy and laughter and delight in the one I would hope to please.  There's so much external - physical - that never enters the equation.  That is not to say that we do not delight in our most basic human capacity.  The pleasures of the flesh are no less real and human than all that high in nobler stuff that many wish to separate and divide me from what I am. 

Yet all that I know transpires in my mind.  Is it the cause or the effect?  Is it the elemental reality of all?  The thing we have called consciousness … and only a portion of our collective consciousness? Or are  we totally separate - isolated - and divorced from each other?  I do have some conclusions here (or at least relative conclusions to who I am right now - I'm sure they will evolve as I do), and though I cannot prove them with any objective criteria my own subjective experience continues to expand and I can feel confident I am not separate, I'm not alone and time and space do not define who or what I am. 

And I experience all reality in my mind. Where allowed, I find I can probe the minds of others, and we are not separate.  We can "know" the other. And though some cannot conceive such thing, we can create our own reality … and often manifests … transcending … but now invading lower planes of contemporary existence.

Love, magic and miracles … call them what you will. All begin in the mind … what shall I create today? 

My World

This is my world. It is not that other. Though both exist simultaneously, this is the world that few may ever see.

Not that it never was manifest, but few are capable of comprehending it. Too many would try to explain it, or analyze it and thus dissect it into it's many various parts, but it can't be done, because it exists as a whole and there is no division, and all relates as one. There is no body or spirit, they are not separate entities, there is no dichotomy between the mind and emotion. We are all human, we all exist, there is no illusion of what is not, only what we create. And many can create a great deal.

In my world, there is no debate … only relate … and everything else finds it's place. Our persona's are what we decide to share, a gift of ourselves we give to each other, and all are worthy of respect. There is no doubt of the existence of any as we all are what we chose to be. And the depth of ourselves deeper than our image emanates and exudes in an environment safe from lifeless eyes and empty minds, but connecting with longings shared and embraced … in words …and music …images … and silence.

This  my world - is not my fantasy, it is my reality. I have seen miracles … and I have made magic … And I have made love … and they all exist. And I cannot comprehend their difference … they are all one and the same.

In my world all is not reason and logic, mathematics and measurement. These all exist, but they do not define or explain. They are clues, bread crumbs dropped along a path into the forest. In my world to know you is to touch you and feel you to see behind your eyes and experience a world not unlike my own, but a new dimension in reality, that we freely choose to give each other … but never … never … to impose upon each other. One gives another receives … there are no rules … there is no law …there is NO judgment … only to love the other. And if there is a code of conduct it is this "get over yourself", we are all only one of the many.

But many cannot live in this world. It is a state of being that has not been given too them. And some hoping to see, would force themselves and presume perception, not realizing they are blind. Because none can demand anything … and not everything is comprehended in the mind, the stuff that intelligence is made of. But feeling (for lack of a better word) realized in the mind, yet existing beyond it, inflicts itself and I emote … I come alive … transcending, though not divorced from my body and all else that is me … the human being.
Many have not been invited into my world. … it is all a gift … and a gift that often takes time to grow and mature. The rules of the world of our "alter egos" do not apply here.

I am crazy as a loon … a mad scientist in my laboratory creating my monster … I am Charles Manson and Mother Theresa, Gandhi and Hitler, I am images of the past and visions of the future, I am the dreams of all, and all are in me … I am that I am … what do you want to be?